Sunday, October 23, 2016

Following the
announcements that Venezuela’s electoral authorities will abide by the rulings
of several lower courts and indefinitely postpone the recall referendum process
against president Maduro, PSUV vice-president Diosdado Cabello declared that the government has discovered plans for a coup d’état by the
opposition.

Cabello said that the
arrest on October 18 of José Vicente García, a militant of the opposition party
Voluntad Popular, had revealed the
plot. According to the government when García was arrested he had in his
possession two hand grenades and two teargas bombs which he was supposedly
planning to use against a police post in the State of Táchira.

Documents in Garcia’s
phone were also found, according to Cabello, detailing a “Plan Condor Rock and
Roll.” The “subversive” plan linked an alleged prison break attempt by Daniel
Ceballos. The plan involves other Voluntad
Popular leaders such as Gaby Arellano and recently arrested Yon Goicochea.

The plan has four
phases, which mix subversive activities with what is assumed to be opposition plans to protest
the blocking of the recall referendum process. According to Cabello in Phase 1, from 14 to 25 October, the opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD)
would promote the “institutional concept of a Popular Recall Referendum,” and
the National Assembly would convene extraordinary sessions to discuss the
absence of Maduro from his post and his alleged Colombian nationality. In a
second Phase of the plan, from 26 to 28 October, the MUD would call for a mock
signature gathering drive. They would also call for a national strike and for
the “presence of NGO’s and other right-wing allies.” In Phase 3, from 29
October to November 9, the MUD would call for a nation-wide protest and a march
to the National Assembly to hand over the signatures for the referendum
petition. In this phase the National Assembly would depose the President and
opposition militants would take over main military barracks in the country. The
final Phase 4, from November 9 until “The downfall of Maduro,” includes the call
for international support of the opposition.

Friday, October 14, 2016

A blog supported by
Telesur has published this
article by Luis Pino. Telesur describes Pino as a “Venezuelan writer and essayist.
Grassroots PSUV politician. SiBCI street communicator, number 16004. University
professor and researcher of social phenomena of spontaneous speech. Professor
of Mother Tongue. Magister Scientiae in Iberoamerican literature. Doctor in
Social Sciences.” (From this biographical note I am especially intrigued by
what “SiBCI street communicator,” Comunicador
de Calle de SiBCI, could possibly mean.)

According to Pino,
Maduro represents a threat to the United States government because he has
defeated the economic war. The danger to the “integrity of the President
Nicolás Maduro” is “nucleated in a single chorus and under a single coordinated
attack force,” which includes:

“a) The national and
foreign economic and business sectors, who are to intensify the economic war in
all its possible forms;

b) The private media, electro
domestic services and its electronic networks are to create a campaign of harassment
and lies in order to generate negative opinions against Maduro and the Chavista
people;

c) The Catholic ecclesiastical
hierarchy who is committed to the ousting of President Nicolás Maduro and is
trying to convince and justify, through the irrationality and the manipulation of
a believing people, the need of the exit of President Nicolás Maduro by any
means, with the direct consent of Pope Francis and the false belief that he
doesn’t know about the evils of these coup conspiracies in which his bishops,
cardinals, and priests, many of whom are also engaged in serious crimes of
pedophilia and of suddenly acquired riches of unknown origin;

d) The university authorities,
who are funded and controlled by the US embassy in Caracas, and who seek to
justify, from their academic positions, the coup in progress that is being
organized against President Nicolás Maduro, and also to spread among the masses
the discourse of hatred against the chavistas, and also to expose the youth
forces as cannon fodder in the guarimbas
(street protests) and for street violence, which the university rectors and
their subordinates are operationalizing with complete impunity.”

This group of conspirators
make up the “murderer quartet” which, according to Pino, is under the direct
orders of the United States government.

Wednesday, October 12, 2016

The director of the Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia (SEBIN),
General Gustavo González López has accused Carlos Ocariz, the mayor of Sucre
Municipality, which includes the populous barrio of Petare in Caracas, of “promoting
terrorist attacks against the Bolivarian National Armed Forces.” Ocariz is a
leader of the opposition party Primero
Justicia and is also the chief of the opposition campaign for the recall
referendum against Maduro.

On Sunday, October 2,
two men drove a motorcycle up to the entrance of a Bolivarian National Guard
post in Petare and threw a hand grenade at the post. Sixteen people were
injured, including two children.

Early police
investigations treated the event as vengeance
attack by a band of bachaqueros
(illegal street vendors) for the arrest of some of its members, but now General
González López has a different version of the incident which involves the
opposition leadership.

González López declared
on national television Venezolana de
Televisión (VTV) that the SEBIN has captured the two men directly responsible
for the attack, and that they have led the police to a “terrorist band” which
wants to ”achieve the resignation of president Nicolás Maduro and imperatively
also achieve the recall referendum [against Maduro] by coercive means.”

“All of these processes,
and accomplices, are indirectly or directly linked to the mayor Carlos Ocariz,
who is now under investigation for his alleged implication and his role as
mastermind [of terrorist acts], and also [to determine] the possibility that he
has financed several terrorist activities,” explained Gozález López. He also
accused Ocariz of being behind child kidnaping cases and of recent looting incidents
in Petare.

In a graphic shown by
VTV, Ocariz figures as part of a “Dirty War Lab” of the Primero Justicia party, and J.J Rondón, a prominent electoral
consultant, is labeled as the “Intellectual Author” of the grenade attack.

González López also indirectly
linked opposition leader Capriles Radonski to the attack because, according to
him, he had been the day before at the place of the incident.

“The SEBIN has dismantled
a Paramilitarized Terrorist Band supported by Venezuelan rightwing factors. (…)
Our responsibility is to neutralize the possibility of terrorist acts which
factors of the opposition could be preparing soon,” added the General.

Opposition leaders,
including Julio Borges and Henrique Capriles Radonski of Primero Justicia and Jesús Torrealba, Executive Secretary of the
opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad
Democrática (MUD), flanked Ocariz in a press conference yesterday
in which he denied the accusations. Torrealba said that this was an attack by
the government that went beyond Ocariz and which aimed to stop the recall
referendum process.